Tourist Trapped: Fake Cable Car Tour

The good news is that there was not a major earthquake in San Francisco in 1907. The bad news is that this is what we were told on a fake cable car tour of San Francisco on Saturday afternoon.

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Cable-free!

Once again along for the ride was my best friend Melissa, who is always happy to join me on cheesy tours of San Francisco because she is from the depths of Georgia and thus programmed to like cheesy tours. Melissa and I purchased two $28 adult tickets on Classic Cable Car Sightseeing, leaving from the same spot (and using the same ticketing booth) as the Duck Tour, right across from the famed Fisherman’s Wharf wheel.

Our fake cable car was pretty full, and Melissa and I were lucky to get two seats on the outside benches next to a couple who would not scoot over, lest their myriad of backpacks and tote bags not have enough breathing room. The name gives it away, but just in case, cable cars run on cables. Fake cable cars are just trucks with tops designed to look like vintage real cable cars. Fake cable cars have nothing to do with cables, and a lot to do with cars. When I was growing up, my father, who was born and raised in the Marina District, would shout at tourists, “It’s fake! That is a fake!”

I sometimes worry he might do the same to me if he were to look too closely at my handbags.

Our driver, whose name I never quite caught, possessed an exotic accent and singsongy way of presenting his tour. Boldly and with much gesticulation, he would announce, “And THIS (pause) is the PALACE (pause) of the FIIIIINE… arts.” Two hours were spent in his enthusiastic world. San Francisco was presented to us as if he were dramatically reading a children’s book to a group of kids in a library.

Our tour meandered through the wharf and the Marina, pausing for 15 minutes of free time at the Palace of Fine Arts. Melissa and I spotted a bride, and a young woman lavishly celebrating her Quinceanera, both having their photographs professionally taken among the columns and swans.

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I've never been more jealous.

Getting an outside seat on a cable car tour is a must, assuming one regards being on a fake cable car at all as a must. I imagine the folks inside felt jipped. That is, until we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. (Again, real cable cars do not go across the Golden Gate Bridge. If they did, Rice-A-Roni commercials would reflect that.) We sped up along Doyle Drive, and approaching the Bridge, Melissa said, “Jesus, this is kind of dangerous.”

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Seatbelt.

A few brass bars kept us from the pavement whooshing past us. Our purses at our feet could easily slip though, our cameras in our hands could easily bounce away. But we were distracted by the view, sitting on a wooden bench on the view-side of a fake cable car, shooting across the Golden Gate Bridge on a cloudless day. We didn’t think to hang on.

All of a sudden, as we passed that point on the Marin side where the bridge becomes a highway, we hit a bump at 45-miles per hour. On the end of the bench, Melissa literally flew into the air. It was as if it’d happened in slow motion. Already, I was paranoid, gripping the rails. But Melissa was all, “Ain’t this city pretty!” and texting photos to her boyfriend. I looked over and suddenly Mel, her hands, her hair, and her phone were mid-air, like a scene from “Inception.” She could’ve fallen out onto the freeway at the end of the Golden Gate Bridge with thousands of cars speeding past. I would have had to appear on “The View,” tilting my head as I provided America with an update on Melissa’s medical status. “The last thing she saw was San Francisco’s skyline from the Golden Gate Bridge on a cloudless day.” I’d say. “She’s holding on, barely. She could really use some more potted orchids.”

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Oh. And then we ran into 'bros.'

Thankfully, Melissa landed on the wooden bench. But I saw her point. We would’ve felt safer in the bed of a pick-up. Shockingly alive, our tour stopped at the lookout on the Marin-side to kill another 15 minutes. A group of teenagers were celebrating a birthday on one of THESE, hiding their beer cans and posing for group photos. Melissa noted that many of the young men were wearing red pants and Top Siders with no socks. “Is that a Marin thing?”

Our tour advertised that we’d make a stop in picturesque Sausalito, but we really just swung around the base of the bridge and went back across the Golden Gate, hitting the same huge, bump again. This time, Mel and I held on for dear life.

The tour continued through Pacific Heights, Upper Fillmore (or as our guide proclaimed it, “Harlem West”), Chinatown, and North Beach. With each neighborhood, he’d offer the hours that the shops were open. In Chinatown, packed with 22,000 residents, he pointed out, the stores were open all the time. A woman seated nearby chimed in, “Hard workers.”

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Awww yeah.

We were winding down quickly. Our guide’s North Beach recommendation for Italian food in San Francisco is The Stinking Rose. Joe DiMaggio got married over here. Crooked street over here. “I Left My Heart” over the loudspeaker. And we were home.